Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
This seminar will explore the relationship between the poetry and the poetics of William
Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Focusing on the relationship between theories of
poetry and their poetic productions, this class will explore the philosophy behind the poetry
and how the poetry might support or undermine that which their theories state. In this seminar
we will aim to facilitate a deeper sense of the poets artistry and value by measuring the
poetry against their theories of poetry. Through close study of Wordsworths and Shelleys
work, we will discuss the debate surrounding the role and identity of the poet and the purpose
of poetry.
Wordsworths Preface to Lyrical Ballads acts as a key tool to understand the ways in which
Lyrical Ballads operates in relation to his understanding of the state of poetry in English
poetry. As Stephen Gill reflects: The particular nature of many of the poems is determined
by Wordsworths quarrel with prevailing literary modes (William Wordsworth: The Major
Works, p. xviii). We will look at the poetry in relation to Wordsworths Preface in order to
gain an understanding of how or if Wordsworths poetics shaped his poetry.
Shelley, writing his Defence of Poetry in February and March 1821, is clearly affected by
Wordsworths and Thomas Love Peacocks treatises on poetry. His influential essay reacts to
and develops Wordsworths essay, and similarly, many critics have drawn persuasive parallels
from A Defence to his poetry.
The seminar will:
focus on the similarities and differences between Wordsworths Preface and Shelleys
Defence;
consider if both poets make similar use of their prose in their poetry;
discuss the ways in which an awareness of their essays affects the way in which we
read the poetry.
Texts to be discussed:
William Wordsworth
1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads;
The Two-Part Prelude
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Defence of Poetry
Alastor
To Wordsworth
Please use the Oxford World Classics edition for both (if you can); they are available in
the library
DISCUSSION POINTS
1. Hardy invokes Wordsworths Ode: Intimations of Immortality in support of his right
to query certain venerable cults: such disallowance of obstinate questionings and
blank misgivings tends to a paralysed intellectual statement. (Thomas Hardy,
Apology, The Poems of Thomas Hardy: A New Selection, sel. with intro. T. R.
M.Creighton (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 309).
Stuart Curran, Poetic Form and British Romanticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 78. See
also David Duff who argues that the poem thrives on the emotional modulation ... made possible by the
technical structure of the ode form, Romanticism and the Uses of Genre (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), p. 208.
2
Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 134.